Neferure was born into the royal household of Thutmose II and his Great Royal Wife Hatshepsut. She is their only securely known child. Thutmose III, a son of Thutmose II by another mother, was her half-brother. His accession as a child brought Hatshepsut into the regency, and she later adopted the full titles of a king. The arrangement made Neferure both a king's daughter and a king's sister. Her precise birth year and age at each change in the court are uncertain, so the surviving titles provide a firmer outline than a calculated childhood biography.

Her best-attested religious title is God's Wife of Amun. Hatshepsut had held the office before becoming king and subsequently passed it to her daughter. It associated Neferure with the worship of Amun, the major Theban deity also revered in the solar form Amun-Ra. The role had ritual significance and linked a royal woman with one of the court's central religious institutions. It should not be confused with a proven marriage to a human king. Nor is it necessary to transfer all the powers exercised by holders of the office centuries later into Neferure's own time.

Small objects make that office tangible. Scarabs found in foundation deposits at Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri bear Neferure's name and the title God's Wife. These deposits were placed in the course of preparing and consecrating a building, joining royal names to the temple's foundations. They preserve a different form of commemoration from a large public statue: the inscription could remain concealed after the ritual was complete. Together with temple representations, the scarabs show that Neferure's role belonged within the official religious setting of the joint reign, rather than existing only as a later story about the royal family.

The statues of Senenmut provide another distinctive record. As royal steward and tutor, he had himself represented with the princess under his care. In the seated group catalogued as British Museum EA174, Neferure rests on his lap; other compositions place the child close within the compact shape of a block statue. The relationship expressed is one of royal trust and guardianship. These are formal monuments, even when their arrangement looks intimate to a modern viewer. They tell us that Senenmut's association with the princess was worth commemorating, but they do not disclose every detail of her education or the private emotions of either person.

Neferure has often been proposed as a wife of Thutmose III. Her family position and royal religious role help explain the suggestion, but they do not make the marriage certain. The identification of damaged or altered names is especially important. In a study of Cairo stela CG 34013, Peter A. Piccione argued that traces beneath the name of Satiah preserve Neferure's name with the title God's Wife. His reading would place her public activity around Thutmose III's Year 23 or 24, after Hatshepsut's death. This is a specific epigraphic interpretation, not an undisputed marriage record. It also demonstrates why an early death cannot simply be treated as established fact.

The end of her life is correspondingly difficult to fix. The absence of her image or name from a particular monument can reflect its date, purpose, alteration or state of preservation; it is not equivalent to a dated death notice. Proposed reconstructions of her marriage, children and burial must therefore be kept separate from the securely named objects. There is no reliable basis for choosing illness, childbirth or a court conspiracy as the explanation for her disappearance. Neferure remains a historically attested princess with a significant religious role, not merely a failed dynastic possibility. Her name survives because her court placed it on objects and monuments intended to preserve royal relationships beyond an individual lifetime.